ResiDual
by BakaNaito
Summary: Ichigo wakes up in strange surroundings with next to no recollection of his identity. To further complicate matters, the keys to his past are locked up in events far beyond his control... and only the Apenado, a clan shrouded in mystery can help him...
1. 1: Face the Door

_Hey y'all, thanks for picking my story... it's my first ever, so REVIEW please... much appreciated._

_******_

_Flowing black robes, swords of different shapes and sizes... the clang of clashing swords... a tall man in black wearing shades, bathed in white light..._

Darkness, darkness all around. There was no up, no down, no feeling, no sensation whatsoever, except for the dull throb he felt where his head should be...

_A smiling woman reaching towards him (who was she?)... a man with short dark hair and a stupid grin jumping at him... two young girls in swimwear running toward him, laughing... (who were these people?)..._

...He felt a sensation of falling, falling forever down some bottomless pit, towards the gaping mouth of a vast dragon whose screams echoed through the dark. He had no recollection of his identity. His memory was as blank as a slate, except for the few fleeting images that meant nothing to him...

_A tall kid with orange hair (what?) wearing those weird robes, a huge sword strapped to his back... a sensible-looking kid, pushing his glasses up his nose... a big guy with such sad eyes... and a girl...crying..._

...Nausea rolled over him in waves as his eyes fluttered open and shut, open and shut. Far, far away, he could hear a maniacal laugh mocking him, as if from a million miles out and through treacle, yet somehow weirdly superimposed over the screams...

_A weird sensation, like winter's fingers clasping his head...then unimaginable pain...then nothing..._

...Where was he? Who was he? How old was he? What did he look like? He had no idea. The laugh reached a crescendo, and the sensation of plummeting worsened, as though he was accelerating towards his end, until...

...He was forced awake not so much by the migraine that threatened to split his head in six places, or even the tortured screams around him, as by the intuition that his life was in immediate danger. He forced himself to sit up, and was rewarded with a rush of nausea that hit like a hundred pounds of wet cement. He had the sensation of being on a mad carousel with no one at the controls. The intuition persisted, a potent knife slicing through the veil of darkness and vertigo that clouded his mind. He forced his eyes to stay open, and within moments he could see clearly. And almost immediately wished he couldn't.

He was sitting in what could only have been a menagerie of the macabre. Tens, maybe hundreds of grotesquely malformed creatures swarmed around him, hissing, screaming, spitting at him, flowing, undulating with a shared tension that gave them the aspect of being one unit with the sole purpose of destroying him. One of them was especially close, and was inching closer. It made his skin crawl to look at it. It was a horrible creature that, in better light, may have just barely passed for a scorpion, in the eyes of a schizophrenic surrealist. The air was thick as fog, a miasma of decay and filth so strong he could almost taste it. It was an affront to his faculties, a sensory overload that served to teach him one thing about himself: he at least had a tolerance for the morbid, and an iron-clad stomach to boot.

He struggled to his feet, casting his eyes about warily, looking in vain for an answer to the tumult of questions and images that filled his mind. A roar from behind jolted him, and he spun around just in time to catch a massive lariat that would have ripped his head off on his forearms. He was thrown several yards off his feet, yet found he was coolheaded enough to plot a maneuver to avert a bad fall. He twisted his legs up and around so he landed coiled in a crouch, ready for his assailant's follow up. And there it came, a hulking seven foot monstrosity, charging at him like a runaway freight train, breaking the ground up under its feet. Just as the monster was within range, he exploded upwards and lashed out with a hammer blow that hit home so hard and square he felt his knuckles crack. He'd barely landed when another creature rammed into him from behind so violently he heard his spine crack. As if by reflex, he reached over backwards at his attacker in search of handholds, and found them when his fingers slid into its empty eye sockets. With an almost Herculean effort, he wrenched it over his head and slammed it down on another one that had scuttled in from the left. Hard. He kept his hold on the creature and swung it like an obscene rag doll, knocking out more of the monsters. He was a mad jock at a frat party, and these low-level Hollows (where was that word from? And how did he even know it had levels?) were his piñatas. However, he was fast tiring, and was slowing down. It seemed that for every Hollow he knocked down, four more took its place. He was taking more hits than he was delivering, and was loosing a lot of blood.

He was still swinging valiantly when he saw a brilliant flash somewhere to his left. It flared out in a wave, destroying every single Hollow in its path. He paused to look, and was trying to comprehend the sight when a fist larger than his head knocked him back onto the mad carousel. He was down before he knew it, and was fast loosing consciousness. The last thing he registered before passing out was a roar, more white light, and a figure hidden in darkness looming over him. Then everything faded to black.

*******

He was lying unconscious on what looked like a beach of gritty black sand that somehow moved and flowed, even in the still wind. His mouth was open, and he was snorting up mother loads of sand. Apart from breathing, he moved about as much as a corpse, and that was exactly what he looked like. The blood from his wounds had long since dried, caking his left eye shut. For hours he lay there under the hot sun until a tiny skull with crab legs and pincers scuttled into his mouth. To the skullcrab, his quivering uvula looked like a tasty meal, and it was about ready to sample it when he suddenly sat up, spitting sand and crab. The critter landed on its back in the sand, clicking its teeth and pincers angrily at him for denying it of a meal. It flipped itself over then scuttled off, clicking all the way, in search of some other meal. He rubbed at his temples, smoothing away the residuary migraine pain, then rubbed his eyes, peeling off the layers of dried blood. He looked around at his surroundings. He was not in the same place as when he first woke up. First, there were no oversized cockroaches from hell screaming in his ear, thankfully. Second, this place was as silent as a mute, except for the clicking skullcrabs and shifting sands. And that was another difference. The sand. He stood up for a better view, and for as far as he could see, there was nothing but sand, black sand all around. He started walking, with no sense of direction or visible destination. He simply felt a need to move.

So he walked. For miles and miles he trekked on under the merciless sun, enduring the risk of heatstroke in an effort to jog his memory, to at least remember something about himself. All he got were fleeting images that were there for a second then were gone, until he registered a peculiar word. "Shinigami." It kept repeating itself, and though he had no idea what it meant, he knew it was something significant. And it seemed to have some kind of association with that other word, "Hollow." He felt strongly that the key to figuring out his identity was somehow tied in with whatever those two words meant. Then he stopped. He sensed he was being watched. He spun around and saw noone. He spun left, then right, then full circle. Still no one. Maybe it was the heat getting to him. He shook his head and kept walking-

-then stopped again. There was a figure about fifteen feet away from him where previously, there'd been no one.

"Hello, Shinigami," the figure before him said. It was that of a man. He was pale-skinned, tall, white-haired, and wore loose-fitting white clothes. At his side hung a black short sword with no pommel and a white edge. Other than the sword, he looked like an advertisement for white.

"Who are you? And why'd you call me that?" He felt cautious. Weirdly dressed men who knew words from his past were new to him. Hell, everything was new to him. Literally.

"What, Shinigami? You don't even remember that much?" The man looked incredulous. "Well, we certainly have our work cut out for us," he mumbled to himself. "Look down at your clothes," he said.

For the first time, he looked at what he was wearing. Loose-fitting black robes. Just like he'd seen in those flashes of memory. On reflex, he reached behind his head, where his sword's hilt stuck out and-. Hey. He didn't have a sword. So why was he reaching for one? "It's called muscle memory," the man said, "And from the looks of it, it's the only memory you've got, my friend." He chuckled softly under his breath.

"Do you know who- what I am? Or what I'm doing here? Can you help me?"

The man looked up at him with a wry half-smile. "Well, if I can't, we'll be in quite bit of trouble now, won't we?" He pointed at him with the index and little fingers of his right hand, muttered some words under his breath, then pointed downwards. The sand beneath them gave, and they were plummeting down a pipe to God -and the man in white- alone knew where. They slid down the meandering pipe, speeding faster and faster toward the end until they shot out of the pipe's mouth and landed, the man on his feet, the Shinigami on his rear, in a huge, expansive cavern. The Shinigami looked around at his surroundings. For one, everything was white. And all around, there were more people in (surprise, surprise) white clothes looking at him. He glanced up at the man standing over him. The man smiled, then extended his hand to him.

"Hello, Kurosaki Ichigo. My name is Palido. Welcome to Purgatory, and Apenado headquarters."

_===End Chapter One_


	2. 2: Open the Door

Chapter Two: Open the Door

"_Let me out! The hell! This is __my__ body! You can't do this! LET ME OUT!!"_

_His knuckles were deathly white. No wonder. He'd maintained a vice-grip on the bars of his prison for so long bloodflow to his fingers had long since been cut off. He kept on hollering, though he knew it was no use. No one could hear him. He was the only soul in the whole of that world. That insane Laughing Man had trapped him within himself, had locked him up and swallowed the key. There was no way out. There was no one coming. He knew that, but kept right on hollering. He would holler himself hoarse, and even then would bang on the bars until something gave. Either the bars, or his sanity._

_*** _

White. Everything he could see in the featureless room was white. The floor, the smooth walls, the bed he lay on, everything was white. He groaned at the pain that lanced through his eyes as they tried to adjust to the piercing effulgence of the place. He was getting sick of the monotony. He rubbed his eyes as he sat up, clearing away the last hints of sleep and pain.

Where was he? He couldn't remember. He knew it was someplace in the Apenados' Headquarters, but he didn't know where exactly. What he did know was that he had to find a way out of the room, that stick-of-chalk Palido guy, and some answers. Yesterday, when he'd gotten here he'd only been told to "rest and build up strength for the task ahead," whatever that meant.

He also knew he was hungry. His stomach was doing an excellent job of reminding him of that. He groaned again at the sound of the mighty rumblings from his midsection.

A quiet _hiss _sound from behind alerted him that someone had entered the room. That was another weird thing about the place. There were no doors, but the walls would suddenly hiss and slit open to let someone through at certain places. How anyone could find these invisible openings was a mystery to him.

He glanced at his visitor. It was a tall, dark-haired girl he remembered from yesterday called something-or-other bringing him a tray of food.

"Good morning Kurosaki-san. I hope you enjoyed your sleep." She set the tray down on a table beside the bed.

"Yeah… would have been better if I understood what I was dreaming about," he said as he reached for an apple on the tray.

"What exactly did you dream about?" she asked in a detached, uninterested tone as she moved away from his bed towards a wall.

"Uh… I don't remember anything exact. I just kept getting blurry images of old stuff. You know, those people dressed like me…. Uh, "Shinigami"? Yeah, and more monsters like the ones I saw when I first arrived here… yeah. Stuff like that." He bit slowly into the apple and almost immediately spat it out. It was like biting into plasticine.

"Hey… this apple is tasteless." He stopped chewing.

Something-or-other (jeez, why couldn't he remember her name?) just stood there, smiling a plastic smile that more than annoyed him.

"Hey. Tell me where that Palido guy is."

Silence.

"Hey!" He stood up and grabbed at her arm, not to harm her, but to maybe shake an answer out of her.

His fingers just barely grazed her sleeve. A tenth of a second later his back slammed against one of the room's walls so hard he was seeing galaxies. Without so much as twitching a muscle, she had thrown him twenty feet across the room into a wall, knocking the wind out of him so fast that for a moment, he forgot how to breathe.

_Hiss. _Palido chose that moment to walk in.

"Good morning Kurosaki-san. I imagine your sleep was restful?" he said, a hint of a smile on his pale lips.

"How… did… how did she...." he managed to wheeze out as he lay spread-eagled on the floor, trying to catch his breath, his hunger forgotten.

"How did she throw you across the room without so much as batting an eyelid?" Palido asked, the smile no longer a mere hint. "That is, I believe, only one of a multitude of questions you want answered, and they all will be, in due time." He glanced at the girl. "Though I do agree that it was a bit excessive of her."

She didn't even blink.

Turning back to Ichigo, he kept talking. "First we will address the most pertinent issue at hand, that of your fractured memory. However, before we can begin the task of rebuilding your memory, we need an idea of the foundation we're working with. We need to know how much he left behind." He paced toward Ichigo, slowly drawing his short sword.

"Who's "he?"" Ichigo asked, picking himself and the pieces of his pride up off the floor. The question was purely for Palido's benefit. He had no interest in what he was talking about.

He couldn't get over being manhandled that way. How'd a girl done that? There was a lot he didn't remember or understand about himself, but if he'd held his own against those monsters, he at least knew he wasn't a pushover.

"I am referring to the Laughing Man." Ichigo stiffened at the name. A strange sensation, like ice pouring down his back then seeping into his skin and bones, chilled him to the core. What meaning did that name hold?

_***_

_He leaned against the bars of his prison, a beaten man. He had no strength with which to shout. He could barely lift his head to look out of the cell, let alone bang on the bars. It was no use. There was no one coming. No one could hear him. Not Zangetsu, not even his Hollow. He was alone._

_Then he heard it. A weird sound, like an oddly detuned windchime floated towards him, heralding the arrival of the hated Laughing Man. A half-second later he was with him in the cell._

"_Hello Ichi-kun," he said in that infuriatingly musical tone of his, mocking him. "What's all this noise for? You do know that you're all alone down here." He'd vanished from where he'd been and was now standing behind Ichigo, his mouth to his ear. "So very alone."_

_In a burst of energy born of hate, Ichigo spun around, his fist cocked to deliver a hook that would tear the bastard's face off. But he turned to face empty air. The Man had vanished again, and now grinned at him from behind the cell's bars. It was all Ichigo could do to keep from spitting in his face. He wanted so badly to break down the bars and tear that infuriating grin off his face._

"_Let me remind you that this is entirely your fault. You were the one who came to me for help, and now that I'm giving it, this is how you repay me? Tsktsk. I am most disappointed." He laughed a small laugh and turned, walking away from him. _

"_I just wanted some answers! I didn't ask for this! Let me out! LET ME OUT NOW!!" _

_It was no use. He was already gone. _

_***_

Palido eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Ichigo's reaction to the name was not lost on him.

"You remember the name?" he asked him.

"Yes… and no. I don't remember the name as much as I remember how it makes me feel… like ice down my back," he said. "I don't understand. Should I remember?"

"Quite frankly, you should, but I would be amazed if you did. The Laughing Man makes no mistakes." He pointed his zanpakutou at Ichigo. "Do you want to remember?" he asked him.

"The hell! Of course I do! I need to know who I am! Why the hell I'm here! Who that "Laughing Man" guy is and what he has to do with everything! I need to know!"

Palido merely gazed at him, his eyes reduced to thin slits. Any trace of a smile was gone. He was as serious as death, the tip of his zanpakutou inching closer and closer to Ichigo's forehead.

"Do you really? Bear in mind that I can only show you the door. You, must open, and walk through it. What is hidden may just be better off if it is left so. You may not like what you see, Kurosaki-san. Are you sure?" The blade stopped an eighth of an inch from his forehead.

Ichigo slowly drew his breath and exhaled coolly, letting out his doubts and fears with the expired air. He didn't remember much about himself. All he knew was that he was something called a Shinigami, wore weird clothes and was a hell of a fighter. He knew that running from the truth was as futile as trying to sell water to a well. Besides, the truth had a way of coming back to bite you in the ass, and he was no coward. No matter what, he couldn't -wouldn't- run from the truth. He would face it head on.

"Yes. I am."

The Apenado sighed and let go of his blade. "So be it."

The black blade hung in the space between them like a man on gallows, awaiting its master's command. It was so close that the anticipation of its touch was as real as if its cool tip _was_ pressed against his forehead, colder than ice, sharper than a needle.

"The task of regaining your memories is a painful one, but my zanpakutou will be there to help you. _[Unravel.] Estruendo_."

The point of the blade sped through Ichigo forehead and out the back of his skull so fast he didn't even feel it. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell over forwards.

Palido turned around and began walking out of the room. He glanced at the tall, dark-haired girl before leaving. "Stay with him until he wakes up, Terrestra," he said as he walked out of the room, leaving her to watch over Ichigo.

He lay there as unmoving as a corpse, his body functions reduced almost to nil. His eyes were rolled into the back of his head, where they could see nothing. Not that it mattered. Right now, what he could see was far more important, and more disturbing than the monotony of his white confinement.

===_End Chapter Two_


	3. 3: Walk Through the Door

_God, I can't believe I was up till 1 a.m. finishing this… hope you enjoy it._

***

Chapter Three: Walk Through the Door

_What the hell! He was falling to the ground with a velocity in the realm of the supersonic, from at least nine hundred feet up! He was falling so fast he couldn't make out the features of the ground he would be one with in the next eight seconds. At this speed, he would be dead before he could even register that he'd hit the ground. What had that sunlight-deprived Palido done? All he'd asked was to get his memories back, but for some reason he'd decided to screw him over and throw him to his death._

_He wasn't slowing down, and he could sense that the end was near. He screamed a scream he never heard, the rushing wind stealing it from his lips before they'd even opened and instead filling his ears with its own whistling scream, drowning out all other sound. He put his arms up before his face in a futile, laughable attempt to save himself from a pitiful death, spattered on the ground like a pathetic gob of mayonnaise as it rushed up to meet his-_

He came to an abrupt stop mere inches from the ground. He was panting hard, practically hyperventilating, his heart racing, pumping blood and a huge dose adrenaline through his system. He flopped the last couple of inches to the ground, hitting with a soft thud. He tried to get to his feet, but he was shaking so badly he could barely sit up. What was the big idea? he asked himself. Why had Palido done that? Was scaring him shitless part of the "task of regaining his memories?" He _had_ said that it would be painful.

What the hell. He took a couple of very deep breaths for a while until the shaking had abated enough that he could stand on his feet. He was in what looked like the backstreets of a quaint little town. A light breeze blew litter across the deserted street and also tickled him in the ear. He found it ironic that a few seconds ago the wind had nearly torn his ears _off_. He let loose a dry laugh as he took his time to drink in his surroundings, trying to jog a memory, trying to recall if this had been a favorite haunt of his, if he'd used this route regularly… if he'd ever gotten beat up here, anything . All he got was fuzzy static. He sighed. He was alone, in what appeared to be a cliché ghost town, and would have been alone and in the dark if it not for the streetlights that shed scattered beams of light on his environs. A fire hydrant here, a stop sign there, a picket fence. There was nothing he could see that told him where to go next. At that point in time he would have given a foot and an eye for a sign that proclaimed "MEMORIES" in flashing neon lights. He cursed in frustration and lashed out, kicking a nearby Coke can across the street and into a signboard that said "MEMORI-"

Hey! Right there on that signboard, it said "MEMORIES"! In flashing neon, no less! What the hell was going on?

All of a sudden he felt very uneasy. An ominous sensation he was familiar with came over him, like so many other times that he had sensed that he was being watched. He'd come to trust these strange intuitions. He turned around cautiously, knowing he would turn to face someone –or something— he had better be prepared for.

And there he was. The source of his uneasiness. Where previously there'd been no one, there stood a figure shrouded in the dark of a corner the streetlights could not illuminate.

"Oh Ichigo. It is so easy to toy with your mind, even in here, within yourself," he said as he stepped out of the dark into the light, a tall, longhaired man in translucent wraparound shades and a long, tattered black garb.

He instantly recognized him.

"I remember you! You're that guy I saw in my memories when I first woke up. You're— "

_A burst of images! _

_Standing alone on a battleground, wielding a zanpakutou, surrounded by this man, several copies of him…_

_Falling down the side of a tall building beside him…_

_On the ground, bleeding, looking up at him …_

_The man shouting at him to stand up and fight…_

_Roaring as he clashed swords with Ichigo…_

_He was flooded with emotions and images, as though the sight of this man had opened a floodgate in the dam that blocked his memories. This man whose name was-_

"—Zangetsu." He remembered him.

"Ah. So you at least remember me. This may yet not be as difficult as I imagined." He locked Ichigo in a gaze that gave him the weird sensation of being in a vise, a huge and impossibly powerful clamp that would squeeze everything out into the open and leave nothing untouched. He felt like his soul was being bared out in the open.

The man in black's gaze intensified. "Oh? But that is all you are, a soul that was forcibly wrenched out of its habitation and sealed away in what was intended to be a prison, but may yet be the source of salvation."

Ichigo couldn't believe it. He was rapidly coming to believe that it would be expedient to trade his mind for the safety of an asylum cubicle, locked away from Shinigamis, Hollows, preternatural Palidos and eldritch Zangetsus whom he did not know or understand. First, Palido had brought him here, by some infernal means, apparently to meet with this weird man from a past he was beginning to dread, who could seemingly read his mind. Now he was being told he was merely a soul? It was preposterous. He pinched himself hard, half expecting his fingers to phase through his arm, as impossible as that was. He winced at the pang, yet was thankful for it. Good old _bodily_ pain receptors, he thought.

Zangetsu moved closer, never once taking his eyes off Ichigo, those eyes that were as unblinking as a cadaver's, as piercing as a scream in the dark. His face was barely inches from Ichigo's when he stopped. Holding a gaze he had no power to break, Ichigo no longer felt his soul was being bared. He felt his soul was being dissected and scrutinized under floodlights. He felt _he_ was being dissected.

"Ichigo, it pains me to see you like this, so lost and confused," he said softly, his eyes seeming to waver slightly. "I will help you regain everything, but to do that, I'll have to take you to a place you may not want to go to. Are you sure you want to go there?" he asked.

"What is with you people? I'll tell you what I told Palido, ye-"

He never finished his sentence. All of a sudden, his surroundings broke up into cubes that floated up and away, revealing a layer of white beneath them which soon enough melted into another scene, set in the same town (he assumed) but in a different quarter.

What he saw was bedlam beyond anything he had ever imagined possible.

The night, which a second ago had been as still as a sleeping babe, was now filled with piercing screams the eternally damned would have envied. Everywhere, all he saw was people running, screaming their heads off, mothers holding their babies tight as they ran, motorists careening down the streets with no regard whatsoever for pedestrian life, homes, storefronts, street vendors' stalls, unmanned vehicles, anything that was stationary either destroyed, mangled or on fire.

And in numbers even greater than the doomed community's screaming denizens, Hollows wreaked the insane havoc. It was as though some malevolent creator deity with a horribly twisted imagination had loosed the very worst of his formations upon the doomed town as punishment for some unspeakable offence. Those terribly unfortunate ones who were too slow or just plain unlucky were snapped up like minnows, eaten whole before they even had the chance to scream. To his left, Ichigo caught sight of a pterodactyl-like Hollow tearing its victim limb from limb, cawing in ecstasy at the sight of blood and the sound of crunching bone.

Ichigo stood there, shocked beyond his capacity for the morbid. He tried unsuccessfully to suppress the urge to hurl and doubled over, retching painfully, though his stomach had no contents to heave. Zangetsu stood there, his eyes filled with sadness beyond expression, taking in the horrors before him. He remembered a time when he had sworn to himself that he would never let Ichigo feel any pain whatsoever. He cast his eyes down sadly, looking at Ichigo, whose retching had ceased, yet was still wracked with spasms as he sobbed, unable to take the sight before him. He lifted his eyes to gaze at the once-beautiful patch of sky above Karakura town which now swarmed with the most terrifying flying monsters imaginable. He had never failed to keep a promise, even if it was only to himself. Never. And he didn't plan on letting the Laughing Man ruin his record.

"I'm sorry Ichigo, but you had to see this first if you were to understand." He laid a hand gently on Ichigo's shoulder. "Do you wish to continue? To find out what led to this?"

Ichigo stood to his feet, his face tear-streaked, his voice momentarily lost. He stood at Zangetsu's side, no longer the lost drifter he had been, for even though a significant chunk of his memory was still missing, the images before him had at least sparked enough recollection that he was well on his way to fully regaining his total recall. He couldn't stop now. With determination born of newfound purpose, Ichigo turned to his guide and said, "I'm good. Let's keep going."

The faintest hint of a smile pulled at Zangetsu's lips as he nodded his approval. Once more, their surroundings broke up into cubes that immediately floated off, to be replaced by a new scene. They were in the same town, but apparently at a different point in time, presumably before the bedlam. They stood in front of a small building with a sign that said "Urahara Shop" (his heart knocked in elation as he realized that he remembered the place!). A few feet ahead he could see his past self gesticulating angrily as he spoke to someone, a tallish man in sandals and a hat (a nickname flitted through his mind, but it was gone before he could grasp it) whom he assumed to be the proprietor. They were just close enough to hear what he was saying.

"What the hell do you mean you can't take it away?! You're the great and mighty Sandal-hat guy (he remembered the nickname now)! How can this be a problem for you?"

"In the first place, Kurosaki-kun, you are the first case I have ever observed of a Shinigami being capable of achieving _Resureccion. _I don't know about the other Vizards, but I think it would be a first even for them," Urahara said calmly, unfazed by Ichigo's apparent anger. "I really don't understand why you would even want to be rid of you _Resureccion_. It could prove invaluable in the real, final battle against Aizen and the Arrancar," he said.

"I… can do without it. You should have seen me when I was fighting Ulquiorra! I went totally apeshit and would have killed Ishida if Orihime hadn't been there! In that form, my Hollow is in complete control, and I can't tell friend from foe. All I know is the bloodlust… and I don't need that! Worse comes to worst I'll find some other way of beating Aizen. I can't risk taking the whole of Gotei 13 down with him," Ichigo said, obviously very frustrated.

Urahara exhaled slowly and said, "Kurosaki-kun, I need you to calm down, go home and think things through. Don't let your fears get in the way of the greater good. I'm afraid I cannot be of help to you. Good day." He turned his back to Ichigo and walked into the store, leaving him out in the front yard.

At Zangetsu's side, Ichigo had almost had an epiphany. He was on the brink of regaining all his memories, and he knew that their next destination would be the revelation that broke open the floodgates. He almost shivered in anticipation, his tears forgotten and long since dried on his face.

The scene broke up into the now-familiar cubes, then dissolved into a new one.

They were in a cemetery. The Past Ichigo stood at one of the gravestones, his mind obviously a million miles away. He seemed to still be absorbed with thoughts of getting rid of his _Resureccion. _Suddenly, the air was filled with an almost musical sound, like a distorted chime floating through the air. At Zangetsu's side, Ichigo felt a chill run through him at the sound. Where was that from? he wondered.

A millisecond later, a man dressed all in white appeared from nowhere, his hands tucked in his pockets, a lopsided smile on his face. Ichigo didn't know how to place it, but there was something oddly malevolent about his appearance. Whether it was the way his dark hair was slicked back away from his elongated, moon-shaped face or his thin-slit eyes with their black irises, those twinkleless eyes that added to the unsettling effect about him, he didn't know. He simply could not place it. His lithe physique gave the impression that he was quite adept at employing the long black zanpakutou that hung at his side.

He walked towards Past Ichigo, his smile broadening very slightly into the beginnings of a controlled grin.

Present Ichigo whispered to Zangetsu, as though afraid that speaking aloud would break the spell this man's presence seemed to have cast. "Who is he?" he asked.

Zangetsu didn't even turn to face him as he said simply, "The Laughing Man."

Ichigo's heart thumped in his ribcage as he looked at his past self, seemingly unaware of the Laughing man's presence. He wanted to shout out a warning, as useless as he knew that would be, when his past self turned to face him and said-

"It's about time you showed up. I've been waiting for hours."

Ichigo just about went into cardiac arrest. What was he doing?!

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that I had a bit of… business to attend to." He laughed a smile, musical laugh.

"So, Kurosaki-san, what can I do for you?" he asked, his smile never once leaving his face as he scrutinized Ichigo with those hawkish eyes of his.

Ichigo stepped away from the gravestone, his gaze cast downward. Apparently this was an issue he's down enough brooding to hatch an egg over, so his answer was almost immediate:

"I want you to take away my Hollow powers," he said, lifting his gaze to catch the Laughing Man's eyes.

The smile no longer merely hinted at fullness. It escalated into a full on manic grin, dripping with malice only a mole would have difficulty seeing.

"Why certainly. A most daunting task, I must admit, though I believe I am well up to the task.

"However, I have one question. Who told you I can perform this kind of operation?"

"Word gets round. Let's get to it," he said as he walked toward the Laughing Man.

His obscene grin seemed to widen, if that was possible. He unsheathed his zanpakutou slowly, protracting the metallic ring of metal-on-metal for as long as possible, as though it was all a game he was enjoying immensely. He held the sword up at eye level, holding it dead between Ichigo's eyes.

"I'll grant your wish, sonny-boy. I'll take your hollow powers, and everything else," he said as he let go of the blade. It hung in the space between them like a death sentence. Ichigo froze at these last words, as though he was beginning to realize something, but it was already too late.

"You should never trust an Apenado, boy," he said as his blade sped through and out the back of Ichigo's skull, forever dooming him to his fate as a prisoner of the Laughing Man.

True to his name he broke into a horrendously manic fit of laughter the Ichigo at Zangetsu's side had never imagined possible. He watched in open-mouthed shock as his past self flopped lifelessly to the ground, surely a cadaver in every respect.

Slowly he turned to Zangetsu, shock written in every detail of his face, the crazed Apenado's laughter ringing in his ears.

"What… what has he done? What did I just let him do?" he asked, horrified at the sight of his body slumped on the ground as it was, unmoving.

For the first time since they had arrived there Zangetsu turned to face him and said simply, "He took everything, Ichigo. Everything."

_==End Chapter Three_


	4. 4: The Other Side

_Well, for those who've been waiting to see this up, sorry for the delay. For the first-time readers, hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it._

_Review, please._

_*** Apenado Headquarters, Purgatory***_

Palido Uspera was not happy. As he gazed out at Purgatory's black sands from the top of the Apenados' home, the White Shell, the peace he had used to go there to find eluded him. He saw the sands, shifting and swirling as though churned by an invisible hand, saw the roiling black clouds over the horizon, even saw the scuttling skull crabs. Nothing was out of place. Everything was as it should have been.

And yet nothing was. Peace had been alien to him for the past three millennia. He sighed and closed his eyes, mourning inwardly as waves of sorrow washed over him in spades, nearly crushing him with anguish. In all his eons of life, he had succeeded in living without regrets. He had never made a decision with negative repercussions, or had to live with them.

Never, except once. And that one decision, that one mistake had set him and the whole of his race on a roller coaster that was catapulting towards an end no one could foresee. And no matter what decisions he made regarding this issue, it seemed the effects would be unalterably terrible. He opened his eyes and gazed out once more at the horizon.

He missed his brother. He remembered all those times he had come here with him to talk and plan and spar and laugh and just be brothers. It did not matter what his pride had led him to become, or what his madness could mean to the entire Spiritual Realm. He missed him. The sands below churned as the sky above roiled, almost in unison, almost as though one was the reflection of the other, each in eternal turmoil, like twin, circling dragons, mirroring each other in an eternal dance, forever in ceaseless conflict.

With Ichigo Kurosaki, he'd been given a chance to right a fraction of the harm his failure had caused, and this time, he would make the right choices.

****

Terrestra Estefuerte was getting tired of babysitting a corpse. What did Palido even see in this pathetic human who'd practically sold his soul for free to the Laughing Man? He was a disgrace who should not have been given the right to wield a zanpakutou, a coward who was afraid of his own power. She looked down at him as he lay facedown on the ground, contempt written deep into every crease of her frown. She drew her own zanpakutou, a beautiful scimitar-like blade, and advanced towards his body with every intention of ending his miserable life. She would have relieved his neck of its burden if Palido hadn't walked into the room at that precise moment.

She looked up at him. "If you had walked in two seconds later he would no longer have had a head," she said as coolly as though she were speaking about cutting her nails.

"Control yourself, Terrestra. Your hate is for the Laughing Man, not him," he said, unfazed by her unfounded contempt of the Shinigami. Really, when Terrestra got something in her head, there was no changing her mind. She thought Ichigo was weak. Short of him single-handedly taking down the whole of the Spiritual Realm, she would never think otherwise. He chuckled, amused by her obstinacy.

"How long have you been watching him?" he asked.

"He's been like this for at least three hours," she said. "How much longer do I have to watch him?" she asked, obviously very impatient.

"It'll only be a little longer. He should have met with his zanpakutou by now; it's only a matter of time before he meets Estruendo," he said as he studied Ichigo's prone figure.

_***Karakura Town, three months in the past***_

It would really be pushing it to think that it was possible to feel worse than Ichigo Kurosaki was at the moment. It was harsh to lose your memory, wake up as a disembodied soul in Purgatory, get beat by a girl, then _somehow _end up in the past to discover that you were yourself the cause of your woes, and that your decisions may have led to the destruction of your world as you knew it.

It was very harsh. Even as Zangetsu ported them out of the cemetery, he brood about the recent revelations. There was no point in cursing himself. The past could not be undone. He let loose a heavy sigh, resigned to his situation.

It appeared they were no longer in Karakura Town. They were in a minimalist landscape not unlike his room back at the Apenados' Headquarters, except there was not a single material object in sight. He felt a weird sensation of weightlessness, as if they were walking, or rather floating on nothing. For a while, they floated on in silence. To Ichigo, it began to feel like being in a room so pitch dark you couldn't two inches out. Except this was something like the opposite of that, and he could see. Well, he could see Zangetsu, at his side, as he always was. He was comforted by that. There was still a huge chunk of his memory missing, but he at least remembered enough to know that Zangetsu would always be around. He found a small measure of peace in that knowledge, and was able to smile a small smile.

He'd just turned away from Zangetsu when he noticed a tiny speck in the distance. It stuck out like a sore thumb, so noticeable in the sea of white. It got bigger as they got closer, until soon enough, Ichigo was able to make out that it was a human figure, and judging by his size, evidently a teenage boy about a year younger than Ichigo. He was dressed in black with thick bands of white along the seams and joints of his clothes, the bands curiously parallel and unconnected or overlapping in any areas of the fabric. He wore what appeared to be, at first glance, aviator-style goggles, but which on closer inspection proved merely to be weirdly styled shades. His hair was black, close-cropped and dyed white in parallel bands in the manner of his clothes. A wakizashi that reminded Ichigo of Palido's zanpakutou hung at his left side, a larger, matching katana strapped to his back. He appeared to be waiting patiently for them to reach him. How he got here or what his purpose for being here was were both mysteries to Ichigo, puzzles that he could sense would soon be solved.

They stopped floating a couple of feet away from the stranger. Their minimalist surroundings fell away and were replaced with a setting like any regular dark alley, replete with overflowing dumpsters and four- and six-legged animal life best left unidentified, a perfect setting for whatever dark revelations this boy was harbinger of. Zangetsu stepped forward, his unwavering gaze matched by the stranger's own, as though their locked gazes provided an unseen connection for an intense telepathic discourse that was all their own.

The stranger spoke first. Without taking his eyes off Zangetsu, he said, "Hello, Kurosaki-san."

Ichigo didn't bother to ask how he knew his name. That was unimportant. "Who are you, and why are you here," he asked.

His question went unanswered for several heartbeats until, as though some pact had been sealed between them, he and Zangetsu simultaneously relaxed and broke their iron connection. For the first time, he looked directly at Ichigo, a boyish smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Ichigo was surprised by how intense his eyes were even behind the shades, eyes that seemed to look right through and beyond him. Eyes like Zangetsu's. He approached Ichigo calmly, deftly stepping past the refuse that littered the alleyway. His smile had spread from his lips to his eyes, seeming to take the edge off his gaze, and for a second, Ichigo almost believed that he was merely a boy, just like him, no more different or special than he was. Just for a second. Then he realized who he was.

"You're Palido's zanpakutou, aren't you?" he said as he remembered that Palido had promised his zanpukutou's assistance.

"Correct on the first try. Pretty smart, kid," he said, in a tone that implied he was centuries older than Ichigo. Which he probably was.

"My name's Estruendo," he said as he shifted his steady gaze from Ichigo to Zangetsu for a second. "Quite an interesting zanpakutou you have here, Kurosaki-san," he said.

"His first words to me were a threat to rip out my tongue if I said or did anything out of order," he said, chuckling like it was a good joke, and despite the apparent difference between his and Zangetsu's ages, it seemed to Ichigo that Zangetsu would have had more than a little trouble keeping his word.

As he introduced himself, Estruendo had closed the distance between himself and Ichigo, and now stood only a few feet away from him. "You know, Kurosaki-san, you're a very interesting character." He cast his gaze up at the patch of starry sky above the alley. "My master Palido believes in you," he said, almost whispered as he stared at the cold, untwinkling dots of light above. "He believes in you, even though you do not believe in yourself," he continued, returning his gaze to Ichigo, the smile gone, his eyes every bit as cold as the stars, cutting through Ichigo deeper than any blade ever would. "And I'll be damned if you do not share my master's faith when I'm through with you," he said as he drew his wakizashi and _flew_ at him, literally _exploded_ off the alley floor, throwing up dust and litter and rodents in his wake, his eyes ablaze with a cold fire that would be extinguished only when he'd beaten faith in himself into Ichigo Kurosaki.

***

_He'd long since come to swallow the indignity of lying on the floor of his cell, now that the ability to feel humiliation was a luxury he no longer had. His memories were the only reminder he had of who he had been. Him, the great hero of the Shinigami. Him, the only hope of Soul Society and Karakura Town. Him, who had once been looked up to as a hero. Him, Ichigo Kurosaki. He felt disgusted, and the bitter irony of it was not lost on him. He had no qualms about lying wasted on the floor like a spineless drunk, but he was crushed by the realization that he had failed all those people who had believed in him. He had been weak and afraid of his own power, and the memory of how much it had cost him was one he didn't care to hold on to. _

_He lay on the floor, defeated, resigned to his fate as a prisoner of the Laughing Man, a mere shell of what he had once been. _

_A pathetic shell. That was all he was now. And until the void within was filled, he was doomed._

_==End Chapter 4_


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